No Associated Press content was harmed in the writing of this post

On Wednesday lambert pointed me to a Bloomberg article by Robert Schmidt and Jesse Westbrook claiming the Obama administration will call for moving some of the powers of the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) to the Federal Reserve. While the SEC has come under fire for its reluctance to aggressively monitor Wall Street, the solution (as lambert points out) is to give the agency the resources, incentive and mission to do so, not to transfer authority elsewhere. Schmidt and Westbrook note that it "still has powerful supporters, including a number of Democrats on the Senate Banking Committee who aren’t likely to support having an agency they oversee cut back," so maybe this is just a trial balloon. Either way it doesn't deserve to make it past the rumor phase.

Whenever the news turns to the world of financial services, though, it seems like the path grows dark very quickly. (If so, that probably is by design.) I read stories like this and think, Congress oversees the SEC which is as it should be - and the SEC should be regulating...what? One of the most interesting reports I have read this year is The Story of Deep Capture by Mark Mitchell (pdf). First published last year, it is a 69 page report alleging corruption and collusion among hedge funds, regulators and financial reporters. It is tempting to dismiss it as tin foil hat conspiracy paranoia, but Mitchell is a former editor of the Columbia School of Journalism. Maybe he went off the rails after working there or maybe he was a bad hire in the first place, but that is something that should be backed up with evidence. All I have seen so far are ad hominem attacks from targets of his investigation.

Let's have a Free for all post. Jeralyn is ticked off, because a judge punishing a reporter who broke the law wants her to do a public interest story as penance. Is this wrong? A bad idea? Why, or why not? Lambert reminds us that B and C (blog) listers aren't really "journalists." Is that a good thing, in light of this case? Meanwhile, journalism is becoming more and more akin to state sanctioned observation and data mining. Again- we want to protect these people?

I'm reminded of that scene in Godfather III, for which I can't seem to find a YouTube, in which Michael learns that Old Yurp ain't so askeerd of his new world tough guy shit after all. I don't know jack about econ, but this seems important to me:

IHT - Politicians, regulators and financial specialists outside the United States are seeking a role in oversight of American markets, banks and rating agencies in the wake of recent problems related to subprime mortgages.

Their argument is simple: The United States is exporting financial products, but losses to investors in other countries suggest that American regulators are not properly monitoring the products or alerting investors to the risks.
"We need an international approach, and the United States needs to be part of it," said Peter Bofinger, a member of the German government's economics advisory board and a professor at the University of Würzburg.

We're almost relaxed, as a nation, as we're told that civil liberty after civil liberty is eliminated, made irrelevant, etc. So I wasn't surprised at the collective shrug that occured as we learned that we're being surveilled in our financial transactions as well as our emails and phone calls. But here's an interesting take on that former matter, from some people who have been looking into money matters far longer than I:

Bankers, Blum explained, "have fended off every conceivable rule that would really be effective. Why are we pandering to them if we say we are in such a desperate situation?"

The political influence of bankers tops all other sectors, I learned as a young reporter. Regardless of party or ideology, politicians seek their friendship. So the United States has created a truly bizarre banking code that legalizes--and keeps secret--vast flows of ill-gotten gains. For what purpose? Terrorist financing, yes, but that business is dwarfed by the drug trade profits, insider looting of corporations, offshore tax evasion, securities fraud, plain-vanilla fraud and other uses.

The American dollar is lingua fria for illegal commerce and Congress protects the sanctity of its privacy, even allows it the criminal proceeds to flow freely through government-chartered and regulated financial institutions. This shady business is not an inconsequential profit center for banks (a bit like pornography for Microsoft).

The monitoring system described by the Times seems unexceptional to Blum. Indeed, his complaint is that it's so narrowly focused that it mostly harvests empty information. "Meanwhile, the biggest purveyor of terrorist money, as everyone knows, are accounts in Saudi Arabia," Blum observes. "Nobody will deal with it because the Saudis own half of America." An exaggeration, but you get his point.